Lalande, the celebrated astronomer, committed a ludicrous mistake in styling James Ferguson, _Berger du Roi d'Angleterre en Ecosse_, the King of England's Shepherd for Scotland. The matter has, however, been thus explained:--Daubenton, as a naturalist, had the charge of the royal flocks of sheep in France. In order to retain his situation under the republic, he required a _certificate of civism_ from the Section of the Sans Culottes. In this curious document, he is called _the Shepherd Daubenton_. Lalande, whose great work on astronomy was published at this period, had seen James Ferguson (the astronomer) designated _the Shepherd_, probably to distinguish him from Adam Ferguson the Philosopher, and hence he placed _Ferguson the Shepherd_ in the same category with _the Shepherd Daubenton_, and made him "Shepherd to the King of England for Scotland!" ------------------ TRAVELS OF VOLCANIC DUST. On the 2nd of September, 1845, a quantity of volcanic dust fell in the Orkney Islands, which was supposed to have originated in an eruption of Hecla in Iceland. It was subsequently ascertained that an eruption of Hecla took place on the morning of the above-named day, so as to leave no doubt of the justness of the conclusion. The dust had thus travelled about 600 miles! ------------------ EARLY LIFE OF ALEXANDER BRONGNIART. This celebrated chemist and mineralogist, upwards of forty years director of the porcelain manufactory of Sèvres, was born at Paris in 1770. His father was justly celebrated for his attainments in the fine arts. His mind developed itself in the midst of that brilliant society belonging to the end of the eighteenth century, which his father was accustomed to draw around him. He there derived, from conversations with Franklin, the germ of that mild and practical philosophy which he never abandoned; and from those of Lavoisier his earliest notions of chemistry, which formed one of the foundations of his scientific career. He gave early indications of that clearness of elocution which formed one of his merits as a professor; and it is related that Lavoisier himself took pleasure in listening to a lecture on chemistry delivered by Brongniart even when he was scarcely fifteen years of age. He studied in the Ecole de Medécine, where he was thrice enrolled; and when every Frenchman was called to the frontier, he was connected to the army of the Pyrenees in the capacity of an apothecary. A stay of fifteen months among these mountains gave him the opportunity of studying a rich and varied field of nature, as a zoologist and botanist. He likewise made geological observations, which, at a later period, took their place in the science, and which he often took pleasure in recalling; but there he encountered dangers which his youth did not suspect, and he was imprisoned under suspicion of having favoured the escape of the skilful